Yan Chihuo naturally knew that Long Sihai and Zong Kerui were hiding certain secrets, but he could not be bothered with them. He had no destination himself, merely picking a direction at random and flying onward. Whenever he encountered demons, he would test his Phantom Avatar on them.
Though the Phantom Avatar technique and the Poison Dissolving Art he had cultivated before were both poison arts, and differed greatly in many respects, they shared a certain similarity in their underlying principles.
The Poison Dissolving Art absorbed countless poisons and turned them to its own use, transforming everything into virulent toxins before increasing their toxicity. The Phantom Avatar, on the other hand, refined deadly poison, extracting its most savage and ferocious essence and turning it into a force that devoured blood essence, using the absorbed blood essence to nourish and strengthen itself in return.
The two shared another point as well: poison arts such as these would ultimately bring backlash. The Poison Dissolving Art had put greater effort into dispelling that backlash, yet it could never eradicate it completely. For instance, with an extraordinary poison like the Demon Immortal Peach, the Phantom Avatar took a different path entirely. By combining itself with puppet-crafting arts, it eliminated that backlash altogether.
However, the Phantom Avatar required its practitioner to split off a wisp of their soul and Primordial Spirit to reside within the avatar. At the instant this art was successfully cultivated, that wisp of soul and Primordial Spirit had to withstand a backlash. If it endured, the art would be complete, leaving no future worries. If it failed, that wisp of soul and Primordial Spirit would vanish into nothingness.
This was no easy matter. If the separated soul and Primordial Spirit were too weak, they could not withstand the backlash and would